


ratwalk catwalk batwalk

by orphan_account



Category: Boondock Saints (Movies)
Genre: Drunkenness, M/M, Sibling Incest, undertones
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-20
Updated: 2020-06-20
Packaged: 2021-03-04 03:28:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,366
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24826822
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: He bobs his head down. “I remember— fucken’ goofy— I remember her, uh,” and he flips around and casts out his knees so he’s leaning on the sink, elbows cocked, “Tryina’ teach me how to ballroom dance.”“No shit?”“No shit.”
Relationships: Connor MacManus/Murphy MacManus
Kudos: 10





	ratwalk catwalk batwalk

**Author's Note:**

> look at me writing for a movie thats old enough to legally drink

He’s daubing at the blood on his upper lip with a balled-up wad of toilet paper and the room seems full of it, of that. He’s in the mirror and in front of you; he’s watching his own hand at work and so there must be two of him, and so why couldn’t there be more, your brother cleaning the blood from his mouth, the red and purple haze of it dancing across the walls, clawing at the prison-cell window, at the stall doors, flaking down layers of graffiti-soaked paint. You’re drunk; the floors stick to your shoes. Filth and humidity and you two, of course, you with your legion of mirage-thin brothers reflecting funhouse across the walls, him with his bloody scrap of tissue and the split in his lip. 

You want to say something like _another day another barfight_ but you ain’t that dumb so you don’t. You put your back to one of those scrawled-up stall doors, feel the rust eating the paint, bitemark patches through the sweat-soggy layer of your shirt, and you let your head tilt and hope you get rust in your hair and look at the ceiling, laughing open-mouthed with all the air you have left in your chest. All punched-in and drawn out, you are, yessir, yessir, more bruises than person, more beer in your blood than blood. 

He looks over; he doesn’t laugh, too, but he smiles cockeyed. His mirrored twin mimics the motion— triplet, you guess, yeah— and his lip pulls up a little, enough to show a pink slip of gum. Pinker than usual. Punched-in, and you think that’s the way to say it right now, the way he looks in his black shirt with the too-long sleeves covering his knuckles (and oh, aren’t they pink and punched-in too) to the second joint. He looks like a curled-up soda can, like something stomped down under a boot. Skinnier, maybe. Small, maybe. 

Your rosary is pulling at the skin of your neck. 

Don’t you know the way this gums look, yessier, yessier, don’t you know the way his hands look, the flesh all crumpled and smoothed down to the bone, witchy and slim; he’s always had these skinny little wrists, and he’s not weak by a long shot but you always thought maybe you could break his wrist over your knee like a stick of firewood. When he’s pulling his hands around in the air like you would underwater while he talks, as he’s smoking with a cigarette between two fingers, it looks as if he witched the cig out of nowhere, just waved his matchstick hand and it appeared, lit, exactly in the crook of his pointer and index. 

“Remember that girl in Corktown?” He says to the sink basin, to the bloody toilet paper sitting in the bottom. 

“Fuck, be more specific,” you say, and start to unlock your knees and go to sit on the floor before you remember the gummy tug on the bottom of your shoes and freeze, ease up, a stupid little motion. 

“Uh,” he says, bares his teeth in the mirror like he’s looking for shit to pick out of the cracks. “God. What was her— Miranda, I think it was?” 

“Miranda.” The right to remain silent. 

He bobs his head down. “I remember— fucken’ goofy— I remember her, uh,” and he flips around and casts out his knees so he’s leaning on the sink, elbows cocked, “Tryina’ teach me how to ballroom dance.”

“No shit?” 

“No shit.” 

He takes a step forward and you do, too, on instinct, in tandem. “Lemme,” he says, and clumsily grabs for your wrist, fingernails glancing off your skin. You bat him away, laughing in the pit of your lungs. He calls you a damn shithead; “c’mon, you damn shithead,” and he catches a grip on your and pulls you out, away from the wall, into the center, angled between the mirror and the door. 

You shove your shoulder into his chest. His palm slaps your back, his arm slung over you, breath hot against the hairs at the nape of your neck.

“Alright,” he says, once you’ve given up the scuffle and let him take your hands, bizarre, and his palms feel coated with grease, or sweat, “y’gonna cooperate?” 

“Maybe if I knew what the hell you were up to.”

“Teaching you to dance.” 

He stumbles— he’s just as under-the-table drunk as you, if no more than. His foot goes out and stubs against yours, and you swear and kick back, but he says “Gotta step when I do,” so you step when he does and stomp on his toes.

“Fucken’ idiot— back, go back.” He presses in again, unbalanced, wobbling to one side. You step into the empty space he left. 

“Uh, okay, thatttaways,” he says, staring down with his jaw set, overly serious like it’s brain surgery, “c’mon, now.” 

You step to the side; he steps to the side. Forward, reverse. You don’t stop stomping on him and he doesn’t stop bumping you. You think there’s supposed to be a rhythm to this, something that could keep up with a song, but there’s not, just you two stutter-stepping around with your hands stuck out and knotted together. 

“No girl ever got you to do this?” he says, and you snort. 

“What, dragged me in circles in a godforsaken bar toilet?” you say, your words all crushed-up ‘cause you’ve got your chin against your throat, staring at the floor, his unlaced boots slipping around, “Nah, Murph, bit faggy for my taste.” 

“You’re the one fucken— fucken ballroom dancing with your brother,” he says. 

You open your mouth to shoot back and his foot slips out from under him; you've stepped on his stupid untied laces. The both of you go over, and if you hadn't caught him with your hand on the base of his skull like cradling a baby he would've bashed his head open on the sink. 

There's a split second of hangtime where he just goggles up at you. "Ow," he says, "fucker," and you snort; then you're laughing to beat the band, still wrapped around each other you stumble-shuffle-walk over to the corner. 

Murphy rubs his face all over your chest, clutching at your arms and the nape of your neck. He's loose and drunk and bruised-up and doesn't seem to know anything. You can't tell if the air still smells like piss or beer, or both, if there's even a difference. He just hangs off your neck and sticks his ass out and buries his face in your shoulder— trying to tell some dumb story about a girl he had, possibly about how well you two had kicked ass in the bar fight, or something, and— 

and you start thinking abt the time you caught Rocco getting head from Donna, the way his hands fluttered around her head like he didn't know where to touch her, as if she were a bike without handlebars. You’re looking at your hands. You're looking at him. You want to smear your thumb over the mole next to his mouth and see if it'll smear like a blob of eyebrow pencil, a fake beauty mark.

You say, “Murph— murphy, get your ass off me,” but he just mutters and pulls in closer, slides one of his hands down to your wrist. Holds you. Keeps you against the wall. Slurs his words; all vowels to your ears, too quiet and too wet to pick out a meaning. His mouth is open and hot against the side of your neck, his tongue flickers out every time he breathes and you— you aren’t doing this. 

You wrestle away and trip, again, end up against the floor with your ass in a puddle. Murphy reels over to the sink and noisily vomits up his dinner. You put your arm over your eyes until he's done. “See, that whole time? You were just raring to puke down my shirt.” 

He tells you to fuck off; you tell him to fuck off, too, and it's nothing to haul yourself up and put your arm around his shoulders again so you can drag your sorry selves home.


End file.
